The fact that SCAF remains for the large part silent on many subjects, at least in public, clearly conceals the degree to which it is pulling the strings. One expects some bumps in the road in any transition, and a certain amount of two-steps-forward-one-step-back, but with the clashes this week in Tahrir, there may be more and more collisions between impatient revolutionary activists and the Army. That could be troubling for the future of the transition. The clashes this week have mostly been with the Central Security Forces, not the Army, but if Sharaf cannot reform the Interior Ministry and its police elements, the honeymoon between the protesters and the Army could be nearing an end.

In the 10 years that I have lived in Washington, I have never seen lobbyists for al-Qaeda parade through the halls of Congress. I have not seen any events on Capitol Hill organized by Hamas. And I have not seen any American politicians take campaign contributions from the Islamic Jihad.
But the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an organization with the blood of Americans and Iranians alike on its hands, freely does all of these things, despite being a designated foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

I've been here a lot longer than ten years, but I share his view. The MEK have been lobbying hard in Washington since the 80s at least, despite being on the terrorist list for killing American diplomats and military personnel in the days of the Shah. They're slick, they're well funded (how?) and they seem able to persuade Congressmen who would never respond to an Arab group in the same way. Yet besides their track record of killing US personnel in the Shah's day, they are based in Iraq, fought on t he side of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, maintain to this day a cultlike "Camp Ashraf" in Iraq that the Iraqi government is pressuring to leave and threatening to deport to Iran, have a true cult of personality about their leadership, and are uniformly hated by every Iranian I know who isn't one of them, from Pahlavi restorationists to leftists to liberal democrats to people who support the current system. After all, they fought for Saddam against Iranians, and are traitors in the eyes even of those who hate the clerical regime.

Their PR skills are good. In my journalism days they used to drop by regularly to try to cultivate me, and while I listened politely, I had too many US military friends who'd served in pre-revolutionary Iran and knew them as their primary nemesis. (The MEK claim that was because their current leadership was in jail under the Shah, and all the bad stuff was done by somebody else.)

True story: I've only been in Iraq once, for about five days in 1989 in between the Iran-Iraq war and the Kuwait war. I was getting in an elevator in the Sheraton Hotel when a smallish man in an impeccable suit stepped in and asked if I was an American. My first thought was, gosh, he looks and carries himself just like the MEK guys in DC. Guess what? That's exactly who he was. With exactly the same missionary spiel.

These are not democrats or freedom fighters. The more you get to know them the more they seem closer to some kind of odd, almost Manson-like cult. Maryam Rajavi is their leader and she (her husband yielded to her years ago since the mullahs don't treat women well and a woman leader impresses Westerners) will be President of Iran when they somehow sweep away the clerical regime. Not through election, through acclamation. She's the Evita Peron of Iran, or at least a wannabe.

I have no brief for the clerical regime, but these guys worry me, especially for their strange, Svengali-like power over members of Congress from both sides of the aisle. I applaud Trita's warning here. Let the Buyer Beware.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

From today's New York Times: "The Fish that Lay the Golden Eggs,": "Abu Dhabi is talking caviar on a scale that would make czars blush." They're building the world's largest indoor caviar factory which, at full production, could account for over a quarter of global production.

I guess if you're a major consumer you ought to get in on the production end as well, but so much for dispelling stereotypes about the lavish lifestyles of the rich and Emirati.

There's been a second day of clashes and confrontations in and around Tahrir Square, with much of the trouble seeming focused around the American University's old downtown campus and Mohamed Mahmoud Street. A lot of the pictures and videos are focused on that street. Back in 1977-78. a long time ago I know, during a year at the American Research Center in Egypt, I lived in an apartment building at the corner of Yusuf al-Gindi and Mohamed Mahmoud, across from AUC. Though my apartment building is long since gone, most of the other buildings I'm seeing in the scenes of the clashes are places I used to pass every day (though the stores have changed on Tahrir itself). Even nearly 35 years later, it still is a strange sensation.

Quick now: if you don't recognize the building at left, where do you think it stands? The tall tower certainly echoes Angkor Wat, and there are other distinctly Cambodian elements to the place.

But it's not in Southeast Asia, it's in Cairo, in the modern (early 20th Century) suburb of Heliopolis, built there by one of the originators of that distinctive and European suburb, the Belgian Baron Empain. He called it the Palais Hindou and modeled it on Angkor Wat and a Temple at Orissa in India. Egyptians today call it Qasr al-Baron, or the Palace of the Baron, though I've also heard it called Qasr al-Magnun (Palace of the Madman.)

Another View

He was, however, no madman. He designed the tramlines of many European cities, and Cairo's, and conceived, with an Egyptian partner, the idea of Heliopolis. Though Heliopolis has a charming, early 20th century European feel to it (especially the neighborhood still known, from an early theatre, as "Roxy"), with a lot of interesting architecture, the expansion of Cairo to the northeast has seen it increasingly surrounded by Egyptian Army and Air Force bases and academies, and along with adjacent Nasr City it has become a major residential center for senior military officers (and many senior political figures as well).

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

There are new eruptions in Tahrir Square tonight; the Ministry of the Interior is blaming "thugs" but the demonstrators are saying a peaceful demonstration was attacked by police and Central Security Forces with teargas. Too many narratives are in play to discern the truth from here tonight, but let's see how it's handled in the morning papers. Meanwhile, #Tahrir on Twitter.

No joke here: Iran's space program has announced plans to orbit a monkey in the next month or so. Iran's space program is increasingly ambitious, though after only two successful satellite launches it may not augur well for the future of the monkey. Back in 1957 the Soviet Union sent the dog Laika up on only the second Sputnik, but with no intention of bringing her back. It isn't clear if Iran expects to recover the monkey.

Here's a useful article on how Egypt's laborers are feeling frustrated and left behind as the elites concentrate on political reform rather than such issues as minimum wage. I think the young intelligentsia and elites should recall that strikes across the country and especially in Mahalla helped start the protest movement, and that the workers were part of the demonstrations from the beginning. Yet they've seen few changes.

I've encountered this extremely useful website before and if you haven't you need to. Access to Middle East and Islamic Resources (AMIR) is just what it says: a site containing links to useful online resources dealing with the Mideast and Islamic world. their postings for June 27 ALONE include these links:

I also discovered a wonderful link: the Claremont Graduate University is posting the Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia, edited by the late, great Aziz Suryal Atiya. (He guided a bunch of us ARCE [American Research Center in Egypt] fellows to the Wadi Natrun monasteries back in the late 70s.) An invaluable resource. AMIR is now in my blogroll.

Today, Egypt's Shi‘ites are a tiny percentage; 1% of the population is sometimes heard. They were much harassed under Mubarak, mostly by State Security which suspected them of being a potential pro-Iranian fifth column. Some are indeed of Iranian or Pakistani origin, but there are indigenous Shi‘ites as well. Some of the often quoted activists are, in fact, converts from Sunnism.

Shahada on the Bab al-Nasr

But the irony is that if by "Cairo" we mean Al-Qahira bearing that name, Cairo is a Shi‘ite foundation. The earlier towns of Fustat, al-‘Askar, and al-Qata‘i became outer suburbs of the new, walled, Fatimid city. Of the three surviving Fatimid gates to the city, one of them, the Bab al-Nasr, carries an explicitly Shi‘ite shahada inscribed on it (There is no God but God; Muhammad is the Prophet of God; ‘Ali is the Wali of God). Later Sunni dynasties never removed it, perhaps because the Kufic is high off the ground and hard to read. Al-Azhar itself, the great mosque/university that became the bastion of Sunni Orthodoxy, was actually a Fatimid Shi‘ite foundation.

Sayyida Zaynab, being honored by the celebrants described at the link, was the Prophet's granddaughter, daughter of ‘Ali and Fatima, sister of Imams Hasan and Hussein. She is also one of the "patron saints" of Cairo, and her tomb there is a popular place of pilgrimage, especially for women. Her birthday is one of he great mulids or saint's days in Cairo, celebrated by Sunnis and marked by the Sufi orders, though explicitly Shi‘ite observations have been suppressed. (Like certain other highly venerated saints, Muslim as well as Christian, she is too popular to be buried in only one place. She also has a highly visited tomb in Damascus. Her brother, Imam Hussein, is held by most Shi‘ites to be buried in Karbala' in Iraq, but the Sayyidna Hussein mosque in Cairo says they have his head. Christians should not be cynical: do you know how many places have John the Baptist's head?)

In fact, Cairo's most popular "patron saints" are almost all of them Shi‘ite figures: Sayyidna Hussein, mentioned already, though today his celebrations are primarily an outlet for the Sufi orders; Sayyida Zaynab; her half-sister (daughter of ‘Ali by a wife other than Fatima), Sayyida Ruqayya (who, like her sister, is also buried in Damascus); and Sayyida Nafisa, a great-great-great-granddaughter of the Prophet who, so far as I know, is only buried in Cairo.

Ironically, of Cairo's great city patron saints, all but one are highly venerated descendants of the Prophet and thus Shi‘a saints as well. The one unambiguously Sunnipatron saint is Imam al-Shafi‘i, founder of one of the four great legal schools of Sunni Islam. His tomb is also a major pilgrimage site. The only irony there is that the Shafi‘i legal school does not wholly approve of venerating saints' tombs and holding pilgrimages.

An oddity: Anwar Sadat in his last years allowed a modern Indian Isma‘ili group to refurbish the Fatimid Mosque of Al-Hakim, creating a Shi‘ite (but not a "Twelver") presence in the ancient Fatimid city.

Despite some heated propaganda when the Mubarak regime was denouncing Iran, there is little likelihood of a major rebirth of Shi‘ism in Egypt. But the bits and pieces of its history still play a role in the daily popular (and Sunni) religious life of the city, especially for the popular city saints.

The whole Gay Girl in Damascus hoax should have caused enough embarrassment by now to just simply let it die. But there's more. There are allegations that a defender of the hoaxer was, in fact, yet another sockpuppet of the original hoaxer, since the postings came from his ISP address. He defends himself, but at this point the story needs to end. Pay no more attention to this, or this guy, or this site, or this site's defenders. It's distracted us all from what's really going on in Syria, and that verges on the criminal.

I, for one, will not mention this blogger again unless it is determined he (formerly she) is a conscious agent of the Syrian government. He has certainly been an unconscious one. Shame.

I have to make a presentation today at noon at the World Affairs Council of DC on the Egyptian Unfinished Revolution, so my posting today, other than this one, will be late-ish.

They're useful reading. Most non-Syrians tend to characterize the ‘Alawites as a typical religious minority that has dominated Syria for decades. Beyond the standard textbook definition, its clear that a lot of cultural and class baggage is part of that identity, regardless of personal religious convictions. (Though that's true of most minorities in the region, Druze, Maronites, Copts, etc.) But useful background in understanding Syria's ordeal.

Maalouf is not the first Francophone Arab in the French Academy. That would be Assia Djebar, an Algerian novelist, elected in 2005.

I wonder if Cardinal Richelieu, the original patron of the Academy, would be surprised. My first thought was, would he find it strange that two Arabs were among the 40 "immortals," as the Members are styled? Then I recalled that, though a Cardinal of the of the Roman Catholic Church, he brought France into the 30 Years War (the last religious war) on what was otherwise the "Protestant" side. So, nah, probably not.

I'm paying too little attention to Iran lately and need, sometime soon, to address the growing conflicts between the Supreme Leader and the President. But for right now something a little lighter, which, however, may be a reflex of that struggle: "Jeans 'are named for jinns and can make you infertile', Iranians told." Now a couple of caveats first: a UAE newspaper like The National has its own agenda on Iran, of course. And it does bother me to see any newspaper in the Arab world, even one in English, use "Jinns" in a headline, since jinn is already a plural. It's like saying "geeses" or "feets" or something. (The singular, of course, is jinni, as in the "genie" of the Lamp.)

But on to the story itself. Arguments over dress code, it claims, are part of the Khamene'i/Ahmadinejad power struggle, and Iran has a developing morality police that seem akin to Saudi Arabia's mutawa‘in, if more selective.

Two further thoughts on the jeans/jinn question: first, do young men really find infertility (as opposed to impotence of course) a bad thing? Until they're ready for kids, at least?

And secondly, please don't tell them jeans were popularized by Levi Strauss. Imagine what they might do with that.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Clearly change is coming, whether by death or revolution. King Fahd, never an enlightened or benevolent monarch, suffered a stroke in 1995 and has not been "dealing with a full deck" in years. His relatives and potential heirs aren't much better.

King Fahd, of course, died on August 1, 2005, so that might explain it. And King ‘Abdullah, who as Crown Prince pretty much ran things from 1995 to 2005, has been King for nearly six years. Always glad to see expert and up to the minute analysis of the Kingdom, especially when discussing it in the context of Arab Spring.

As Egypt engages in a debate over whether to write a new constitution beforeholding elections, or to proceed as currently planned and hold elections in September and then revise the constitution, the liberal political parties have generally favored the constitution first, while the Muslim Brotherhood prefers the \present schedule. Prime Minister Essam Sharaf was widely quoted as saying he favored the constitution first approach, but subsequently backpedaled and said he had been misunderstood and besides, it wasn't up to him, suggesting possibly that the Army Council had overruled him.

Further muddying the waters is a curious multi-party alliance recently forged, or perhaps not. A few days ago, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Wafd Party, and a group of other parties in Egypt (a total of 18) announced an alliance of sorts, though exactly whatsort remains unclear. (They "discussed" running a unified list of candidates, but apparently didn't actually announce they would form one.) The Economist notes some of the ironies: though the Brotherhood and the Wafd forged an electoral alliance in 1984, at that time the Wafd was the senior partner and the Brotherhood technically illegal. The Wafd traces its origins to the 1919 Revolution, and the crescent-and-cross flag of that uprising (left) is echoed in the Wafd's more modern logo (right). The Brotherhood, far from proclaiming a secular and non-sectarian message, has as its motto, "Islam is the solution."

The alliance also includes other Islamist parties and even the leftwing Tagammu‘ party, not to mention several new parties of varying political coloration. It seems clearly to ber an electoral maneuver to capitalize on the fact that the Brotherhood does not plan to run candidates in every Parliamentary race. Issandr El Amrani used his weekly comment in Al-Masry al-Youm to analyze what he calls "a dalliance, not an alliance," and ashe notes, it's far from clear what the parties have agreed on. "Sandmonkey" (Mahmoud Salem) calls it an unholy alliance and offers some good observations, though he reads it as if the parties have agreed to run a unified list, whereas I read it only that they have agreed to "discuss" one.

My own take at this point is that most of the party-alliance maneuvering right now will evaporate quickly if a constitution first approach is taken; a shift back to a proportional representation system from the current constituency system would transform everybody's calculus.

But Sharaf's seeming shift in his position suggests the ultimate decision, at least for now, may with the men behind the curtain, the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces. In public at least the Giza sphinx remains more talkative than they do, but all indicators are they support elections first, and no delay in the September schedule. The Brotherhood prefers early elections before the liberal and secular parties have time to fully organize, and that lack of organization seems evident in this electoral maneuvering.

Though several other candidates had been mentioned, ‘Orabi, a former Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Affairs, may be a logical pick as a transitional Minister until an elected government can be formed, but that also means, as this analysis laments, he probably will not rock the boat or diverge much from the policies of the Mubarak era. ElAraby, on the contrary, had pursued new courses, with policies less aligned with the US and more critical of Israel. ‘Orabi, who served as a deputy chief of mission in Tel Aviv in the 1990s, is likely to be less confrontational. A former soldier and son of a former Chief of Staff, he is likely to be trusted by the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, though reports like the last link above saying he was personally close to the Mubarak family and supportive of Gamal's succession, he may not sit so well with he revolutionary youth.

A couple of recent items of interest for those concerned about the Internet in the Middle East. Make of these what you will.

A Tunisian court has stepped in to reinstate the blocking of porn sites in Tunisia post-revolution. The Tunisian Internet Agency apparently had lifted all censorship, but the courts are ordering it reinstated. The concern among Tunisian journalists and reformers is not, of course, that they are being deprived of porn (they have French and Italian satellite channels for that), but that Internet censorship justified on the grounds of blocking pornography quite often (See Saudi Arabia, China, etc.) becomes the instrument for blocking political expression. If you have a filter, you can decide what to filter out. The blocking of the Internet and social media in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and most recently Syria has not prevented ongoing dissent there (any more than filters have completely blocked access to the Internet-savvy anywhere), but it has certainly been used as much for political and repressive ends as much as to protect the youth from pornography.

Speaking of censorship, the world champion enforcers of morality, who not only guard against porn but also against such Western decadence as cinemas, women driving, and unveiled women, Saudi Arabia's Hay'a or Agency for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, AKA the Religious Police, are getting interested in using social media to promote their efforts. (The link, to the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan, is in Arabic.) To summarize the rather brief (and apparently, unlike this post, devoid of irony) report, they are looking into how to use Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (all named in the report) to further their mission. Now, I've posted before on the clumsiness of some old-guards in the Middle East trying to venture out into social media, such as the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces' publishing their communiques to Facebook, but just putting up an image of their communique as if they were sending a fax (that's still how they're doing it). But the mutawwa‘in on Facebook or Twitter? It defies the imagination. No, sorry, on reflection it doesn't: Orwell would have gotten it immediately: what better media for letting people denounce their neighbors for their sinful ways? A tweet, a private Facebook message, a visit from the Religious Police, and the Prevention of Vice (if not the Promotion of Virtue) is accomplished.

I'm still reserving judgment. After nearly 12 years on the throne Muhammad VI has earned something of a reputation as a reformer, and the worst abuses of his father's reign have been tempered, but he has also not appeared to be prepared to abandon historical royal prerogatives. Keep reading both sides and keep watching developments would be my recommendation. That's what I intend to do.

An Egyptian Ambassador to London and a secretary to Nasser's Vice President Abdel Hakim Amer also died mysteriously in London. Egyptians living there really need to exercise care around windows and balconies, at least until we see how much has changed since the revolution.

Fans of the cult movie The Princess Bride will recall the exchange between a character who keeps using the word "Inconceivable!" for every unanticipated development and another who responds, "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."

The officer looks stricken. "I don't know what to do," he says plaintively. He has never been faced with a female driver before. "If I raise it up [the issue of her driving] it is wrong. If I let you go it is wrong." Maha al Qatani just stares him down.

After a tense half hour, Mohammad al Qatani returns with the cop at his side. Maha shifts to the passenger seat, and Mohammad takes the wheel. He silently hands her a yellow sheet of paper. Maha al Qatani stares at it for a moment, her brow furrowed in confusion. Then she breaks into peals of laughter.

Raising her fists in a victory salute, she shouts, "It's a ticket. Write this down. I am the first Saudi woman to get a traffic ticket."

I didn't post last week on the Saudi women's driving protest, and if you're not familiar with it you can read this and also this, but this poor cop didn't have a clue what to do when pulling over a Saudi woman whose husband was in the car. It gives me an opportunity to get my two cents in a bit belatedly.And of course there's the inevitable Facebook page here.

I'm no lawyer but if I understand correctly it is religious edicts, not legislation proper, that bars Saudi women from driving, though the obvious conundrum is that this means most Saudi women require (male) chauffeurs, usually foreigners (Pakistanis and such) who are unrelated, though otherwise they're not permitted to be in the presence of unrelated males. Other Muslim countries, even rigorous ones like Iran, or so far as I know even Afghanistan under the Taliban (which was content with keeping women out of schools) have not banned driving. It's persistently rumored that even King ‘Abdullah favors change, but if so he must be intimidated by the religious establishment.

It may be that the "Arab Spring," bringing down governments and provoking civil wars elsewhere, may have a much lower goal in Saudi Arabia: women drivers. Somebody somewhere on TV said, "Ladies, Start Your Engines," but I can't give proper credit because I can't remember who. (Diane Sawyer maybe?) I agree of course, but this is actually a fairly strange and unduplicated restriction, and I can't believe it will stand forever. The "foreign male driver" issue may be the cause for its eventual fall, but whatever works and all that.

I'm about to head to an awards ceremony marking my daughter's last day in fifth grade and her promotion to Middle School, so my other posts today will be this afternoon and evening.

King Muhammad VI of Morocco's proposed new Constitution is receiving mixed reviews at best. Before linking to some of the interpretations, you may want to read the King's speech and the proposed constitutional document:

Husni Mubarak's lawyer has now confirmed what was rumored throughout most of last year, that the former Egyptian President is suffering from cancer. Rumored since his gall bladder surgery in Germany in March 2010, especially during his long delay in returning home, it was vehemently denied by Egyptian officials at the time.

But things have changed, and now Mubarak's health is the one thing keeping him from facing trial on a range of charges including corruption and sanctioning the killing of protesters. And it just may be enough, since the ruling Military Council is not eager to put a former officer on trial.

Despite growing warnings from Western countries as well as Turkey, this still seems far from any kind of end game, at least as far as I can tell.There are reports which suggest there was heavy fighting in Jisr al-Shughur last week, which may go to the question I addressed cautiously last week as to whether what is going on in northern Syria is an armed uprising, rather than merely peaceful protests.

Adolph "Al" Schwimmer died on June 10 in Tel Aviv at age 94, but the obits appeared in the last day or two. Schwimmer, an American who violated US laws to provide aircraft to Israel at its birth, later became the first President of Israel Aircraft Industries (now Israel Aerospace Industries), and is generally considered the father of the Israeli Air Force. Ironically, he died on his 94th birthday.

Born in New York in 1917, Schwimmer worked for Lockheed Martin and TWA, and in the Israeli War of Independence helped smuggle surplus US military and other aircraft through Europe to the new state of Israel. Some credit him with the birth of the Israeli Air Force. He returned to the US after the establishment of Israel, and was tried and convicted of vi9lations of the Neutrality Act, and stripped of his right to vote, though not imprisoned. David Ben Gurion invited him to Israel, where he founded the country's aviation industry. He headed Israel Aircraft Industries until 1978.

In the 1980s, when I was working on Middle Eastern defense production issues, I got to know IAI pretty well, and Schwimmer was legendary, though I never met him.

Northern Syria is a landscape of ancient cities, many of them long since abandoned to the desert, but others still going concerns. As the campaign in Idlib Governorate continues, we are reminded of its deep history.

Yesterday Syrian forces were massing around the town of Ma‘arat al-Nu‘man after clearing Jisr al-Shughur, presumably preparing to move in.

This ancient city is known historically for an earlier atrocity, and for its most famous son.

The atrocity, in 1098, occurred when after a long siege Crusaders in the First Crusade, after granting terms to the town, not only massacred the inhabitants, but, starved for supplies, famously resorted to cannibalism, even by the Crusaders' own testimony. Rarely mentioned by Western histories (though it was admitted at the time), it was not forgotten in Syria.

But fortunately, Ma‘arat al-Nu‘man is famous for another reason: the great poet/philosopher Abu al-‘Ala' al-Ma‘ari (973-1058 AD), known for his poetry and his freethinking philosophy, came from there.

Let's hope whatever is coming is more in keeping with the poet's vision than the Crusaders'.

This has nothing to do with the Middle East, that I can immediately come up with, but I'm going to post it anyway. Besides, Marc Lynch has dropped Rap references into his blog posts, so there's a precedent.

Apparently during the US Republican candidates' debate on Monday, John King of CNN sought to break the seriousness of the debate by asking "Tea Party" star Michelle Bachmann whether she preferred Elvis or Johnny Cash. She fudged by saying "both," which is a correct answer to be sure (though I don't agree with her politics generally), but seems to ignore the real answer, which is to cite the "Million Dollar Quartet" jam session of December 4, 1956, in the Sun Records studio in Memphis. (Your blogger has stood in that studio, and yes, he's been to Graceland, and even to the King's Birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi.) On that day Carl Perkins (the great country/R and B singer who first recorded "Blue Suede Shoes" but is mostly forgotten) was jamming at the studio with a young, then-unknown piano accompanist named Jerry Lee Lewis, when Johnny Cash dropped in to pick up a guitar and sing along. Then Elvis, who had left Sun (which discovered him) for RCA, dropped in for old times' sake, and the four decided to wing it together. Conflicting contracts and licensing issues kept it from the public for decades, but when it was finally released as "The Million Dollar Quartet" it became a classic. Photo above (Perkins is second from left; if you can't recognize the others you're too young to be reading this).

By the way, B.B. King, the greatest of the Blues artists, was also a Sun artist at the time, too. Oh, what would we have had if hehad dropped by? Memphis perfected: rock and blues and country and R and B which are all actually the same roots music when you get down to it. We can only dream.

Now that is the only correct answer to "Elvis or Johnny Cash?" Sorry, I needed to vent. Back to the Middle East. I have spoken.

"When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers." — Kenyan proverb

I want to be careful what I say here and how I say it because I absolutely do not want to give aid and comfort to the Asad regime in Syria, which has responded brutally to many clearly peaceful protests in Dar‘a, Homs, and elsewhere, that were genuinely seeking democratic change. And its refusal to allow outside journalists to report from Syria means that YouTube videos and rumors drive the ongoing Western narrative of what is happening in Syria, so the regime has itself to blame for the image presented to the outside world. But I also think there are increasing questions about whether what is going on now in Idlib Governorate along the Turkish border, and especially in Jisr al-Shughur, is the brutal crushing of a peaceful movement (which the Asad regime is clearly capable of doing), or is, as the government paints it, the brutal crushing of an armed uprising. Heavy fighting has been reported; has it entirely been tanks against unarmed civilians?

If you didn't read it yesterday I'd urge you to peruse it now. Next, let me refer you to As'ad AbuKhalil (The Angry Arab) on the question of "Who is behind the violence in Syria?" His first point is that the regime is responsible. His second point is that the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria has not been a peaceful organization in the past, so why assume it is now? (the Syrian Brotherhood is not the MB in Egypt or Jordan, despite common origins; its history with regimes led by people named Asad is not a gentle one). His third point deserves quoting at length (punctuation and capitalization as in the original); my comments after:

3) There are from what I am hearing Wahhabi and Salafite groups with money and weapons who have been active in Syria. I won't be surprised if the Harirites are involved too. I find it very likely, in the service of Hariri agenda. A reliable informant of this blog in Syria tells me (I am translating from Arabic): "Yes, there are professional, trained, and organized gangs which are controlled by clerics who all have lived in Saudi Arabia, like `Adnan Al-`Ar`ur, and they kill and use violence against other sects...In Latakia, there are professional elements which used to live a normal life like sleeper cells and they perpetrated acts of sabotage and sectarian sedition and I saw that myself as i was there then...In Tell Kalakh, there are splinter groups from Fath-Islam which are moved by Hariri money, and not Hariri men as spread by Syrian media. In Banyas, it is said that there are officers from Saudi Arabia and UAE and a Mossad element who are now in custody of the security service. There were booby traps there because it has a generator and an oil refinery and a pipe line from Iraq. In Homs, there are extremist pockets from prior to Ba`th and it has been reactivated and is still strong with Saudi money. Now Idlib is all in flame and Turkey is supplying all with weapons and with fighters. Army is facing difficulty advancing because all passages and bridges have been booby trapped." This last passage is from my informant and I have no way of verifying the information. And as they used to end books of Islamic theology, I say: And Karl Marx is the all-knowing.

PS Nir Rosen added this: "there is also the iraq and zarqawi factor syria was a key staging area for zarqawi types, they had safe houses in damascus and allepo, they had a network of facilitators, as the americans like to say and i'd love to know whats happening in the border area with iraq's anbar where families have close ties on both sides and where zarqawi people had safe houses. the town of abu kamal for example, which borders the iraqi town of husseiba in al qaim. the americans raided abu kamal a couple of years ago and killed some key al qaeda guy. abu kamal had an uprising against the regime a couple of weeks ago. i think the zarqawi factor is an important one. these people always spoke about how the final battle will be in Sham".

Now As'ad AbuKhalil in his Angry Arab mode can come on a little strong, and the scattershot implication of everyone from Mossad to Al-Qa‘ida in Iraq to the Hariris to the Saudis may seem a conspiracy theory of the first order. Nor does his invocation of Saint Karl Marx impress those of us who prefer Groucho, Chico and Harpo as our Marxist icons. But all those elements he cites do harbor a certain enmity for the Asad regime. I don't think they're all involved here of course,but some of them may be stirring the pot.

Now since the Syrian uprising got rolling I've alluded to the Hama massacre in 1982 a number of times, usually to deplore it. Thousands died, even by the most cautious estimates, perhaps 10,000 or even more; the city was virtually destroyed. But Hama was not really analogous to what happened in Dar‘a or Homs in recent weeks and months. Whether it's analogous to what's happening up north is the question here. In 1982 the elder Asad (or really his younger brother Rifa‘at, who was the "bad cop" of that era as Bashar's younger brother Maher is the "bad cop" of this one). didn't just roll up the artillery and start shelling the city to rubble because they felt like it. They fought a battle lasting some three weeks to retake a major city that had risen against the regime. The results were a humanitarian disaster, and have deservedly stained the Asad name ever since, but it was an armed uprising that came close to lynching the governor and was the culmination of a sustained assassination campaign against the ‘Alawite establishment. Whether the uprising was justified or not is a matter of debate, but it was not a peaceful protest, it was an attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Salafis to proclaim the liberation of the city as a first step in dismantling the ‘Alawi grip on power. The brutality of its crushing has overshadowed the nature of the revolt. And while the regime at the time blamed everybody in sight for subversion, including the usual suspects (the US and Israel), some arms did flow from Lebanese Christian militias and from Saddam Hussein in Iraq, both deep enemies of Asad.

The regime keeps trying to paint what's been happening up north in those terms: an armed uprising, even an attempt to seize Idlib Governorate and create a Libyan situation with a secessionist region. If true, that doesn't justify the ferocity of the response, at least not necessarily, but it does alter the narrative a bit. And let me note that during the extended conflict in northern and central Syria between the regime and the Muslim Brotherhood that extended from the late 1970s until the suppression of the Hama revolt, Idlib was an area of Islamist dissidence, and there was at least one government operation in Jisr al-Shughur, in March of 1980. And I say this as a historian by training who wants to know what's really happening, not out of any empathy for a brutal regime.

Having learned to read from comic books, my first grade readers being far more boring and simplistic, and having been introduced to great literature by the Classics Illustrated comics of the 1950s, I have no intellectual disdain for what today are called "graphic novels," though I don't tend to read them. So I thought I'd call your attention to this item about a graphic novel series focusing on Operation Ajax, the CIA/British orchestrated coup against Mossadegh in Iran in 1953. The author is making the first episodes free on the ITunes store for IPad users. Here's the trailer:

The link and the trailer are all I know right now.

As an aside since somebody may bring it up anyway, Kermit ("Kim") Roosevelt, who helped orchestrate the coup and wrote a memoir about it, served as President of the Middle East Institute for a short while may years later.

With so many human atrocities on record already in Libya, preservation of antiquities is naturally not anyone's priority, but Leptis Magna is a World Heritage Site and one of the best-preserved Roman cities anywhere. (North Africa as a whole, like the Middle East in general, often has far better preserved Roman ruins than Italy does.) I certainly hope it isn't damaged.

Trivia note: the name of Tripoli itself came from Latin Tripolis, the three cities, referring to Oea (Tripoli proper), Sabratha, and Leptis Magna.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, in an interview with BBC, has expressed concerns that while the disorders associated with Arab Spring may in the long term bring about more democracy, in the short term they may pose a threat to Middle Eastern Christianity. He noted attacks on Christians in Iraq, church-burnings in Egypt, and growing concerns abojut sectarian violence in Syria.

One of the ironies of the situation is that the democratic movements themselves have generally sought to embrace minorities; the cooperation of Copts and Muslims in Tahrir Square was a potent symbol. But the salafi Islamist elements also gaining a new voice have provoked clashes in Egypt, while in Syria the Christian community has often been seen as aligned with the ruling ‘Alawite minority, and thus resented by the Sunni majority.The situation differs from country to country, but the ironic reality is that Christian communities, as noted by the Archbishop, are indeed often the victims of spreading democracy.

Syria has reported heavy fighting at Jisr al-Shughur, and the question is who the Army has been fighting: is it a scorched earth campaign or, as the Syrian government claims, has there been heavy armed resistance? Josh Landis offers some commentary and a good roundup. There's certainly a humanitarian issue with the refugee camps along the Turkish border, but the lack of independent reporting on the ground and huge discrepancies between the government and opposition narratives probably deserve a certain amount of caution. I put nothing past the Asad security forces, but I'm also not sure of what has been happening or who has been controlling the town. Just because the government is capable of atrocities doesn't mean there isn't an armed opposition. Let's watch this one.

Patrick Seale, the veteran British correspondent (long with The Observer) and author of two of the key works on modern Syria (The Struggle for Syria and Asad), is one of the great generation of British Arabist correspondents who brought a journalist's writing style along with a scholar's expertise to their coverage. I crossed paths with him occasionally, mostly back in the 1980s. He knows Syria intimately.

A week after the blogging community (and not just Middle East bloggers, including me) were horrified by word that Gay Girl in Damascus blogger Amina Arraf had been abducted by security men, the story has gradually been eroded by growing skepticism and now has apparently entirely evaporated. The author of the blog appears to be neither gay, a girl, nor in Damascus. Other than that, says the confession on the blog, "While the narrative voice may have been fictional, the facts on this blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone -- I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about." Other than that,other than not being gay, or a girl, or in Damascus, or abducted, it was all "true and not misleading"? HUH?

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

The brief confession signed by Tom MacMaster includes the lines, "This experience has sadly only confirmed my feelings regarding the often superficial coverage of the Middle East and the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism." Whatever exactly that means, the creation of an imaginary sockpuppet blogger and then the claim that said blogger has been abducted would seem to offer little to really educate Westerners out of their ignorance (undisputed: it's the reason for this blog, which bears my real name and identity and my employer's real name and identity) or to help the plight of gays, women, or dissidents in Syria; if anything it may have focused the security forces' attention on those very communities. It also plays into the regime's hands: this particular "dissident" was apparently a man and woman living formerly in Georgia and currently in Edinburgh, Scotland but traveling in Turkey. I can see the regime claiming, if they are clever enough to capitalize on this, that the "dissident movement" is a creation of the West, just as "Amina" proved to have been.

Be assured administrators of this site - who were friends with "Amina" online - are just as angry as everyone else over the revelation made by Tom MacMaster. This foolish and cruel hoax has distracted from the real issue in Syria - that the Syrian people are sacrificing their lives for calling for an end to a regime that silences, disappears, tortures and murders its people, a regime that has repeatedly fired directly into peaceful demonstrations. Thousands of political prisoners are being held by authorities, with many of them undergoing torture right now. The world should know about the courage and suffering of these innocent Syrians and stand with them.

Of course like anyone moderately familiar with the culture of the Internet I realize that what you see is not, always, what you get, and that the idea of the "sockpuppet" can rarely be excluded. The famous New Yorker cartoon of some years back, at left (I hope The New Yorker copyright lawyers will see this as fair use) summarizes it perfectly.

Anonymous blogging is fine. Many of the finest bloggers in the Middle East either started out, or remain, anonymous for good, survival-related reasons; but I assume when I read them that their basic personas are real; even if I don't know their names. The guys are guys; the women are women; the young people are young. Those that have unveiled their real identities in the age of revolution have pretty much matched up with their anonymous persona. I didn't care if the "Gay Girl in Damascus" was really named Amina or not: as her story crumbled a lot of us waited, fearing she was a real person who'd used a fake name and stolen somebody else's Facebook photos, but might in fact be in a Syrian jail. As online sleuths demolished first her photos, then her not very detailed biography (searching Virginia and Georgia records for her claimed background and finding no records), it became clear that both her photos and her name were fake. A 2007 blog under the same name offered fragments of autobiography, with a birth in Staunton, Virginia, and being raised in Damascus and Virginia. That blog admitted it included fictional elements. (It does, however, show a familiarity with the real Shenandoah Valley, especially the Harrisonburg-Dayton-Bridgewater area. If I have anything to add to this overall investigation it is to say that her (fictional) childhood town of "Riverport" is almost certainly Bridgewater, a town I know well. The description, the neighboring towns, the river and the Old Order Mennonites pretty much nail it.)

But as long as there was a chance there was a real person, with another name and another photo, in a Syrian prison (or worse), I didn't want to pile on. But now that we see this as a complete invention, with no real person involved, I want to see more than a brief apology that says we meant well. Harm has been done to the communities involved and, worse, the international press has been diverted from a humanitarian horror in Syria by a blogger-driven diversion.

What makes it worse is that I contributed to it, and inadvertently committed the prestige of The Middle East Institute and Middle East Journal as well. So did a whole lot of other good folk and true, who are hoping for real change in Syria. Shame on these insensitive hoaxers who. whatever their misguided intentions, may have cost lives among the real people who live in the real Syria. There are real gay girls in Damascus and in Syria, but you cannot speak for them. We are not they. During the Tahrir days, many Westerners said "We are all Egyptians." No we aren't, and no we weren't; our butts weren't on the line and nobody was threatening us with live ammunition. Pretending you're a frontline dissident is like pretending you're a Medal of Honor Veteran: it steals from those who really are, and it demeans you. Fiction hurts those whose butts really are on the line, and all Syrians who are living a real nightmare and are really being abducted. Shame.

A few months ago, the Moroccan King made similar promises. OK, your majesties, if you're really the "enlightened" monarchs you want us to think you are, let's deliver on these promises. They're where you start, not where you finish.

Prime Minister Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) has easily won a third term in Turkey's elections, but early returns indicate it is several seats short of being able to unilaterally writre a new constitution. The CHP, the old Kemalist Party that's reinvented itself as a social democratic movement, ran second, and the rightwing nationalist MHP ran third, with independents (many of them from Kurdish parties) rounding out the results so far.

I'm no expert on Turkey, but I think this is both an unsurprising and probably a hopeful result. The AKP seems popular, but hasn't been given a carte blanche to do what it wants, either. More here.

Friday, June 10, 2011

The city of Jisr al-Shughur on the Orontes, where Syria claims 120 security forces were killed by protesters and has pledged vengeance, has apparently been under fire all day. Much of the population has fled either into the neighboring mountains or across the Turkish border. Apparently anyone appearing in the streets is fired upon by helicopters or armor. What really happened earlier this week is still unclear, but many reports suggest a military unit went over to the protesters and then was shot by loyalist troops, or something similar.

We are seeing a real worsening of the situation in Syria, and may be entering Hama 1982 territory in terms of the government's level of ruthlessness. But even that was a real uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood,while by all accounts except the government's the current demonstrations are unarmed.

Sunday Turkey will go to the polls. I do not hold myself out as any kind of expert on Turkey; MEI has its own Turkish Studies Center and other think tanks around town do too, so I will not presume to preempt their genuine expertise. On the other hand, I can't ignore the impending elections, so I'll link to folks who might know what they're talking about.

I'll start here at MEI. Taha Ozhan, Director General of the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) in Ankara, recently spoke at MEI. Here's the YouTube video (Part 1 of 7), or if you prefer you can download a podcast of his talk here.

Personally, and again as a decided non-expert on Turkey who notoriously has had trouble trying to use a traveler's phrasebook in this language which, unlike Arabic, makes so much depend on vowels, I see nothing very "Ottoman" about the AKP, either in the old imperial sense or the footstool sense. I do suspect Turkey, rebuffed and pretty much dissed by the European Union, is finally recovering from the Kemalist insistence that it is part of Europe and has nothing in common with those lesser folk to the east. If this is "Ottomanism," it's also reality. Turkey borders Syria and Iran, and has religious and cultural links (not to mention historical ones) binding it to its eastern neighbors for good or ill. You can ban the fez and the veil and the Sufi orders, change the alphabet and even the language of the call to prayer (at one time), but you can't really deny your history.

I am not a Turk and I will not be voting. Whether the Turkish people choose the AKP again, or the reincarnated CHP or someone else is not my choice, but I assume those who see another AKP victory have some basis for their expectations. I do welcome democratic elections whenever and wherever they occur in the region. Vote wisely, Turkey.

He wants to do this to bring tourists back to Egypt. If you understand that logic, let me know.

I'm not sure what to say except that he seems to have a downright Western, even American, sense of how to manipulate the press and get his 15 minutes of fame. If he comes out of this as something other than Lion Chow, he may have a future in US reality TV. Unless PETA or the Egyptian government decides that circuses should stay in tents, not at the pyramids.

Thanks to a new Blogger feature (not any tech genius of mine), if you are so addicted to this blog that you access it from a mobile device like a Smartphone, you'll get the optimized-for-mobile version, which shows the headlines and short intros, smaller photos, etc. It will look like the image at left, only smaller. If you access it on a computer you'll still see the usual version. If anyone out there actually accesses me from your phone, let me know if you prefer this version (I can turn it off, but sort of like the way it looks). It works fine with Android at least; if you have problems let me know.

The statue of the former Egyptian president sitting in an armchair in front of three pyramids was taken away from a park in the town of Khirdalan near the capital of the ex-Soviet republic on Tuesday.

Questions: Why on earth would they have a statue of Mubarak in Azerbaijan? Surely not due to the huge quantities of Egyptian aid flowing to Baku. Why was he sitting in an armchair in front of three pyramids? Even the pharaohs were usually shown standing. If there was going to be a statue of Mubarak in Azerbaijan, why was it in a town outside Baku and not in the capital? Why does the story not explain these questions?

Why is this probably the only post this blog has ever run in which the labels include both "Azerbaijan" and "Husni Mubarak"?

I think it goes without saying that certain of the questions, such as her use of a picture that is apparently of someone else, can be explained as self-protection; her blog certainly seemed convincing and had built up a following. Perhaps I've spent too much time in the region, but my first thought when I saw these stories was that the Syrian government would very much like us to believe that she doesn't exist, which makes me suspicious about the speculation. Perhaps she camouflaged her identity for obvious protective reasons. Of course, I could be wrong, but if her blog was a hoax it was a convincing one. I'm not convinced she's not real, but may be proven wrong of course.

Deep in your heart, do you sometimes get tired of the latest bloodshed, the latest rhetoric, or the latest political analysis of the current scene? Not to mention the latest peace plan or human rights atrocity? Do you wish, momentarily, for something older, more cerebral, but still relevant to the Middle East? Do you ever ask yourself, "were there any Punic or Berber loan words in Etruscan"?

No? Really? Never? Not even when contemplating the geopolitics leading to the First Punic War? Well, me neither, at least until now.

But, rest assured, someone cares. Here's a piece called "Ancient African Adstrate in Etruscan." I might quibble with "Ancient African," since Punic is Phoenician to all intents and purposes, and thus Middle Eastern, and yes, I had to look up "adstrate" too. Apparently linguists use it in contradistinction to superstrate and substrate, and it means loans between languages which were of equal influence or prestige. Berber is indeed an indigenous African language, or rather family of languages, on the other hand, so "Ancient African" can stand.

Now, the first thing to keep in mind about Etruscan is that nobody can read Etruscan. Well, that's not strictly true; we can read it, since the alphabet mixes Greek and Latin; we just haven't got a clue what the words mean. When I look at Finnish, I recognize all the letters, but other than "Nokia" and certain vodka labels I can't recognize any of the words. But Finns can read it, and there are dictionaries. Etruscans aren't around to help out. All of us are like that in Etruscan, since the alphabet is readable but the root language is unknown. the numbers have been deciphered and Roman sources give us a few more words, but no one can read Etruscan texts unless there's a Latin bilingual, and that's mostly limited to tombstones.

But before the rise of Rome, Etruria and Carthage were the dominant powers of the Western Mediterranean, so some borrowing would make sense. And the Berber (which is more what is cited in the article than Punic) could have come via Carthage. Though the article doesn't caption the two paintings there, they are reconstructions, I'm pretty sure, of the Naval Harbor at Carthage. Despite the good job the Romans did on Catoizing Carthage. its outline remains visible even today.

A couple of weeks back, on May 22, the Coptic Pope, Shenouda III, went to the Cleveland Clinic for his regular checkup; the Pope has acknowledged back problems, is rumored to have kidney problems, and at 87 (he'll be 88 in August) is someone whose health is not only of concern to his flock, but to Egyptians generally at a time of sectarian tension. His succession is likely to be a thorny and disputed issue. (Relevant previous posts can be found here.)

At the moment, given the sectarian tensions in this transitional period and the fact that one of the most prominent potential successors, Bishop Bishoi of Damietta (see the links above) is anathema to many Muslims, many Egyptian Muslims might want to join with their Christian fellow countrymen in praying for the aging Pope's health, at least until things stabilize a bit.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

The inscrutable sage of Middle East Politics, Walid Jumblatt, has done it again: shifted his allegiances with the prevailing winds. Qifa Nabki, to whom credit for the Yoda Photoshop at left also belongs, traces the Druze leader's shifting stance, from pro-Hariri to pro-Syrian and now, with events in Syria, seemingly tacking back in the other direction. Qifa also has links to many of the earlier shifts in allegiance of the man who, as I have noted before, is probably the only member in good standing of the Socialist International who also was, for a time, a darling of the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

"Michael Collins Dunn is the editor of The Middle East Journal. He also blogs. His latest posting summarizes a lot of material on the Iranian election and offers some sensible interpretation. If you are really interested in the Middle East, you should check him out regularly."— Gary Sick, Gary's Choices

"Since we’re not covering the Tunisian elections particularly well, and neither does Tunisian media, I’ll just point you over here. It’s a great post by MEI editor Michael Collins Dunn, who . . . clearly knows the country pretty well."— alle, Maghreb Politics Review

"I’ve followed Michael Collins Dunn over at the Middle East Institute’s blog since its beginning in January this year. Overall, it is one of the best blogs on Middle Eastern affairs. It is a selection of educated and manifestly knowledgeable ruminations of various aspects of Middle Eastern politics and international relations in the broadest sense."— davidroberts at The Gulf Blog

"Michael Collins Dunn, editor of the prestigious Middle East Journal, wrote an interesting 'Backgrounder' on the Berriane violence at his Middle East Institute Editor’s Blog. It is a strong piece, but imperfect (as all things are) . . ."— kal, The Moor Next DoorThis great video of Nasser posted on Michael Collins Dunn’s blog (which is one of my favorites incidentally) ...— Qifa Nabki